~ Photography, Art, and Whatever

ColdBrook Studio

ColdBrook Studio is a showcase for digital artwork by William Sargent. Bill has been taking photos since childhood, using his trusty Brownie and occasionally a Rolleiflex TLR borrowed from his Dad, who was an accomplished photographer and naturalist. He got is first very-own camera, a 35mm Minolta SR101 SLR, when he was chosen to spend a summer traveling through the Soviet Union with a group of young people, sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee. The pictures he took on that trip were his first serious photographs, and he has been taking his photography seriously ever since.

Bill learned basic B&W darkroom techniques from his father in a darkroom they shared in the basement. While he was fascinated by crude techniques, such as dodging and burning-in, that were then available to adjust a less than perfect negative, he often wished for more precise means to make his final images better. He learned to retouch negatives and prints by hand, but these procedures also left much to be desired. Color photography only worsened this sense of frustration because of the vastly more complicated processes it required. So when digital cameras and software for manipulation of images came along, Bill embraced them early and enthusiastically.

Today his images can be seen here on WordPress, or at his Coldbrook Gallery website. Many of his images can also be seen on Flickr. Most are developed from his original images. Some are reworkings of very old images in the public domain. A few are outright abstracts

Bill practiced family medicine for 20 years in Vermont, and another 12 years on Cape Cod, where he now lives in retirement with his wife. He still works with his images.